“Won’t your people be sick?” he asked.
“They’d vomit,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “if I had any—in particular, I mean.” And having struck the pathetic note Ivor grinned broadly and Transome grinned broadly back—and then they parted sharply asunder, the one to the conquest of the world and the heavens, and the other back to a routine which was more than usually embittered by an idea that it must be rather amusing to be an orphan.
The only other persons to whom Ivor said good-bye were the boot-boy, whom he tipped; the steward, whom he tipped; the two dormitory housemaids, one of whom he tipped and the other kissed as well, for she was a nice girl; the matron, who kissed him; and the house-master’s wife, a kind and comfortable body who was extremely surprised at having the tips of her fingers very gallantly kissed. Ivor was enjoying himself like anything, and didn’t mind who knew it; for being expelled is not bad fun when it isn’t for dirt, and when you have an “Indian” motor-cycle, T.T. Model, which means that you can do a fabulous amount of miles per hour in an exceeding uncomfortable position and for no earthly reason except to lie about it to your friends....
2
The expulsion came about this way.
At about the middle of that summer term it became obvious to the intelligence of the meanest bacillus that strange things were happening at Manton by night. These strange things were not, of course, defined to bacilli, except that they were uncommonly strange. Bacilli had therefore a lovely feeling that history was being made, and some one’s history in particular.
There were rumours, new rumours every morning, delightful and outrageous rumours, so that the lumps in the porridge were swallowed without comment and the fish-cakes were eaten without contumely. The masters looked unusually stern, but it was the sternness of thought rather than of discipline. Coll Prees went about with smiles gravely repressed and an air of being more than usually responsible for everything. House Prees and Bloods (indescribable beings, neither Prefect nor Inferior, amazing centaurs, not divine but certainly not human—just Bloods) were everywhere to be seen in earnest colloquy. For the matter was, that there was some sort of night-prowler about the school grounds. It would have been almost bearable if the night-prowler had prowled only about the grounds, but he prowled into the Houses, he prowled actually into the house-masters’ sides of the Houses; he prowled into their studies, he sat on their chairs, he read their books, he drank their port, he tested their barley water, he smoked their cigars, he left a neat little bit of Greek verse on their desks to thank them for same—and then, as it were for a joke, he bolted the windows from the inside, locked the doors from the outside, and left the keys in such an obvious place that no one ever found them until new ones had been made. And this went on, once or twice a week, for more than a month! Watch was kept, police were stationed about the grounds (for weeks any strange face about the school grounds was held to be that of a “plain clothes man—and jolly plain at that!”) and the Coll Prees were called upon to keep night-watch over the House where each held dominion.... Then there was a memorable night when the night-prowler was chased. Two Coll Prees and Mr. Sandys, of the Lower Fifth and the Hampshire Eleven, were patrolling the borders of the Senior Turf, about which lie the main Houses of Manton in the form of a horse-shoe. Suddenly, just ahead of them, was seen a moving dark thing. They leapt. It ran. They chased, but the dark thing hurled down the slope from the path to the flat darkness of the Senior Turf. “He’s got running-shorts,” grumbled Mr. Sandys, who was in a dinner-jacket. “And gym-shoes,” grunted Mr. Sandys. Then came a laugh behind them, and again they leapt. But the dark thing grew darker and disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings made by the gymnasium, the gates, rackets-courts, and House No. 6. “Blast!” said Mr. Sandys, and gave up. The Coll Prees had given up long before.
Of course the night-prowler was caught in the end, but he need not have been caught so stupidly. The head-master (the late Canon Sidney Wentworth Carr), himself prowling about the grounds at three a.m. one morning, some days after all hope of finding the miscreant had faded, thought he saw, for a bare second, a smothered cigar-end in the little overshadowed lane that runs between Houses No. 2 and No. 9. He promptly scuttled into the garden of No. 9, darted towards a certain point in the wall, secured an ill-tempered victory over the low branches of the trees for which Manton is famous, and finally got to the wall. The Canon was a little man, so he had to stand on his toes; and he looked over the wall. There was the figure, a yard or so away with his back to him, smoking a cigar. “Silly ass,” the Little Man thought. “As if he liked it!”
And then he struck a match sharply. The figure started round.
“Got you!” said the head-master.